“No,” she said. “I only saw him when he was working.”
“Thank you again for your time. I’ll call if I need anything else.”
“Great.” She gave them a quick smile, then headed to the women’s locker room.
When Michael and Sloane were back in the security office, Sloane said, “She was off.”
“How?” he asked, grabbing a water bottle from the mini-fridge. “She didn’t contradict her previous statement in any way.”
“She was busy when we were talking to her, but there was really nothing she was doing that couldn’t wait five minutes. For example, she folded already neat towels. She cleaned already clean equipment. She kept looking at the clock.”
“She said her shift was almost over.”
“It all had the feeling of nerves to me.”
Michael thought a moment. “She didn’t seem nervous when I spoke with her yesterday, and I didn’t notice she was nervous today.”
“Where’s her application?” Sloane asked.
Michael sorted through the employee files that Brian had retrieved for them. “Here.” He slid it over to Sloane since he didn’t know what she was looking for.
She opened it, skimmed the sheets. “It says here she’s from Las Vegas, Nevada... has worked in a variety of hotels... bingo.”
“What do you see?”
“Her references. She has some holes in her employment history, but look—she worked in Nashville when Reid was there. It’s not the same place, but...” She frowned, pulled out her phone and typed something.
Michael leaned over and read the file. “You think they met there?”
“Maybe,” she said as she scrolled. “Okay—yes—she worked at Fitness Square, which sounds like a business, right? And shedidn’t include an address, only a phone number. But Fitness Square is actually the name of the gym at the resort where Reid worked.” She jumped up, opened the whiteboard where Ryder had written the Garrett Reid timeline. “She started there three months after Reid, and left only two weeks before he did. This could be it. This could be where their paths crossed.”
“Where was she the year Reid was unemployed?”
“She worked at a restaurant in a Dallas hotel.”
“And after? When Reid was in New Orleans?”
“Nothing here. Whoever interviewed her put a sticky note that she had a lapse in employment because she was caring for her sick mother.” Sloane snorted.
“You don’t believe that?”
“Not really. Maybe she did have a sick mother, but I think she didn’t want her résumé to match up exactly with Garrett’s when they both applied to work here. That’s why the small cheat on the fitness place in Nashville.”
Playing devil’s advocate, he said, “She started here at the beginning of the year, months after Garrett.”
“I think that was intentional. I think we can prove it.”
Sloane picked up the phone. A minute later, she asked for the human resources manager of the New Orleans hotel where Garrett had worked. Five minutes later, she ended the call and said with a thin smile, “Hope Davidson worked for the hotel as a cocktail waitress. She simply didn’t put it on her résumé.”
“Let’s go ask her about that,” Michael said and motioned for Sloane to follow him back to the gym. “And find whoever she was training on Sunday to see if they saw or heard anything.” He hadn’t followed up with the individual because there hadn’t been a need at the time. He glanced at his notes. “His name is Will. I didn’t get his last name.”
Hope wasn’t behind the counter. Another woman was there, “Jane” according to her badge. Michael had only spoken to her briefly because she didn’t work weekends.
“We were here speaking with Hope earlier,” Michael said. “Can you let her know we have a couple more questions?”
Jane said, “She left.”
“Do you know where she went? Did she leave the grounds?”
